Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]
A party has already encountered The Ranger's favored enemy (say dragons?) so many times that every Pc at the table knows every single stat, power, weakness, full stat block of dragons.
Then They encounter a dragon that is identical to a statted one in the MM, so nothing new at all.
Would the above Commune druid' spell and ranger's ability still be useful to overcome the dragon encounter, or are by now redundant and useless?
The information portion at that point would be redundant and useless, unless it is being used in a creative way. For example, the Ranger in question(as well as the party) would know about the strength and weaknesses, but may not know the hunting habits of each dragon type, and perhaps they want to set up a trap for the dragon. The Ranger's ability would still be very useful for those creative uses that lie outside of the stat block.